Almost every year he talked about children who were suffering. In 1983, he recalled, ” On the day of the Solemn Inauguration of my Pontificate, I said: “Open wide all your doors to Christ!” And, today I say to you: Open wide your hands in order really to give all you can to your needy brothers and sisters! Do not be afraid! Each and every one of you; be new and untiring dispensers of the Charity of Christ.” As a good Father, he was encouraging: “Everyone and each of us is a Good Samaritan! By a call! Out of duty! The Good Samaritan lives with love.” It may have seemed that the Holy Father was saying obvious things, explains Archbishop Mokrzycki. But, when he called for a revision of somebody’s life, to confront it with the word of God, this had to make us think. Whoever listened to him carefully, he heard that the Holy Father is telling us to reflect on ourselves. And, ask ourselves: Do I truly live the way Christ would like it? So I truly live the way I say I do? Because it’s not enough to say: I believe. In 2001, John Paul II said this: “In the modern world, alongside sacrificial witnesses of the Gospel, there are also baptized people who, hearing a difficult call to go “on the road to Jerusalem”, take an attitude of tacit opposition and sometimes even open rebellion.” He explained that all of this is happening because prayer is “experienced superficially, and the word of God does not affect their lives.” About Lent he said that it was God’s gift. And, that you need to be able to accept this gift. In humility. Standing in truth. To determine how much of God’s child is in me. To bow our heads; and, to stop believing that we live here for earthly matters, because – he reminded – “our homeland is in heaven.”
With the permission of Archbishop Mieczysław Mokrzycki – “A place for everybody”
Znak Publishing House, Kraków 2013
